The
TECH TALK pages of my website are just a collection of topics that I
have put together and happy to share. A collection
of information gathered from many sources on
the topics of synthesizers, electronic music & musical
composition
development. I am not a theorist or physicist; I am
only piecing
together what is available knowledge and participating with that
knowledge at my level. This effort of mine is to build a basic manual
for my own practice of sound synthesis, design & electronic
music
composition. I hope you find it
interesting and possibly helpful towards your own musical pursuits.
On
these pages you will find that I have broken-down sound for what it is
& established an understanding of the various methods of
synthesizing
sound in order to propell my own education into new forms of
composition.
There is a mathematical world behind everything we do, and it would be
naive of me to not spend some time investigating it. The
introduction of mathematics in sound and composition is nothing new; it
has been the subject of study for more than two centuries. It has a
been a driving force behind many of the instruments and software
instruments that are used by today's musicians. The mathematics of
sound still has the potential to break new ground in the future of
music.

The
art of synthesizing tones from one sound into another or the generation
of totally new sound structures is a field of study that is always
changing. On this page I will define the known primary developed forms
of audio synthesis. The practice of synthesis is more scholarly
&
more scientific than the simple exhibition of patches and sound waves
arrived at from playing on a synthesizer. All synthesizers are palates,
from the analog to the monophonic, from the digital to the polyphonic,
and certainly one should have a well-rounded collection of these
devices before you can start down the road of practicing synthesis or
sound design. There are other tools which are also necessary;
oscilloscopes, samplers and various forms of storage used for studying
and recording waveforms as they are created. I want to restate that I
am more of a composer, but the sonic structure of sounds has always
interested me, how was a sound wave created and what the sound wave is
composed of? I still have a long way to go in understanding sound and
there is so much more yet to be heard. So I will start by understanding
the various forms of sound and synthesis types that are currently known
to be in use, and make note to some of the commercial synthesizers that
employ the technology. mathematics
of sound

Sound, first off by any
listener
should be broken up into two concepts. The physics of sound, called the
acoustics of sound, and the way we perceive that sound, called its
psychoacoustics. Understand these two as separate study’s and
observations will help you to achieve a better result in understanding
a sound from one wave to another, or even in applying these two
concepts towards creating a new sound. Easier in fact, because with say
a commercially bought synthesizers, you can quickly get access to the
various tones and patches that have been put together to create a
sound, the acoustics, and then listening to either that sound or an
alteration to that sound can be heard on the fly, as you change it, the
psychoacoustics. No two people will perceive a sound the same, we all
listen to everything in a different way. Is psychoacoustics the
determining factor to whether some wave has been synthesized correctly
or not? Who knows, one person will like the sound clean, while the
other will like it distorted. It's a matter of taste.

Breaking
sound down into its components and the relevant math, has yielded two
areas of study that I have found myself compelled to work; sound design
through commercial synthesizer synthesis and computer generated music.computer
generated music

More than mere lines of
counting or
charts of numbers pointing to statistical data, computer aided design
in music composition has found a home in today's music. Like in all
forms of art, we have the classical, the contemporary and the
improvised. With computers we have been able to investigate all three.
Our ear respects the classical, we live in the contemporary and we
listen to improvised. Computers are a tool at our disposal to do our
business; they are everywhere, helping us in so many areas of our
productivity. Computers can be directed, motivated or they can create
all on their own. The journey into computer generated must be made by
the open listener because what you are hearing is the computer’s
ability to be creative, to be motivated and to be individual. The
mathematics of sound's outer boundary lies here by manipulating math
and equation to create composition and even evolving sound. The timing
can be absolutely perfect or the flow can be individual and can arrive
at conclusions not thought or composed out in the classical fashion,
whether; orchestrated, jazz, tribal or pop.history
of the electronica

A
timeline of artists
& musical compositions that shaped a genre of music filled with
electronic invention.